National Palace Sintra
We have a quieter day today – a walk up the hill (if you visit Sintra hills are inevitable) – to the National Palace which is adjacent to the main square.
Wikipedia says that it is the best preserved medieval royal residence in Portugal as it has been in near continuous use from the early 15th century when the Islamic Moors ruled the region until late in the 19th century. None of the Moorish construction survives with a part of the building being dated to the early 14th Century and much of it was erected in the early 15th century.
Externally the most striking aspect of the building are two enormous conical chimneys which extracted the fumes and smoke from the kitchens as there are two large banks of ovens and stoves for the cooks to be able to feed the royal family and the inevitable entourage.
There was further construction in the early sixteenth century as Portugal gathered wealth from the expeditions being undertaken across the world at that time. Inevitably the earthquake of 1755 led to damage but it was restored in the same fashion. Following the creation of the Republic in 1910 it became state owned and was the subject of significant restoration in the 1940s becoming a tourist attraction.
Magpie Room National Palace
The magpie room was decorated by King John 1 (ruler from 1385 to 1433) who had apparently been caught kissing a lady in waiting by his wife Philippa of Lancaster (daughter of John of Gaunt) and sister to the later Henry IV (of England). A woman not to be crossed I suspect. She married as part of the famous Anglo-Portuguese Alliance which commenced in 1386 (marriage in 1387) – making Portugal the longest of our allies and the alliance remains in force to this day.
As previously mentioned we had a light lunch in Café Paris and having spent the afternoon doing some reading in the evening we go the nearby (to our B&B) Romaria de Baco which looks slightly unprepossessing from the outside but inside we are again warmly greeted and enjoy a good meal, partly enlivened by a party of three (parents and a teenager) who were clearly having a somewhat serious argument as everyone is clearly quite fired up. Sadly with no knowledge of the language we could only guess what the upset was.
On the Wednesday (5 March 25) we have to return home. I had originally planned to take the other rail line back into Lisbon and then changing onto the metro for the last couple of stops out to the airport. Jackie insists that we book and take a taxi as she does not want anything to go wrong. At one point on the motorway we are moving very slowly and I get close to saying something but the jam clears after about twenty minutes and I have managed to restrain myself. However it would have been less stressful (probably) by rail, although I am not enthused by the metro and their lifts / escalators not being there when needed. Then the usual hanging around the airport until we have a plane and back to Heathrow and recover the car and head home.